JP Morgan Chase Sued For Misleading Homeowners

When most of the world was suffering during the recession in recent times, there were a few who took undue advantage of this situation. These scheming minds jumped on the golden opportunity to cash in on other’s adversity. This has exactly been the case with those few companies who had been helping homeowners. Who could have guessed the real motives behind their sugar coated talks and promises!

The latest buzz about the tiff between the helpless homeowners and the lenders brings out a new tale which could be due to possible miscommunication and improper information. Some homeowners in California, who were facing difficulty in making their payments on their mortgage, have claimed that they were informed by their banks that they had to be delinquent on their mortgage payments to qualify for modifications. Thereby, their Chase representative kept them from paying their mortgage payments in order to make them eligible for the above said modifications. This plan clicked and the owners received a letter informing them about their qualification for the modified program in June 2009. But just three weeks later the owners again received a letter. This time it informed them of that Chase was foreclosing on the home. When asked, the banks denied this. In fact, they claimed that they have not foreclosed on the properties at all. Meanwhile real estate agents started dropping in under the impression that their home was an REO. Though the banks have denied any kind of foreclosure, the public records narrate a different story altogether. Public records clearly show the foreclosure mentioned above. No one has any clue what the bank was actually up to! At the receiving end, the poor families spent months trying hard to clear the air with the bank, to no avail. Finally one family filed a complaint in the District Court and sued the bank. The causes of action were breach of contract, violation of Fair Credit Reporting Act, predatory lending and fraud. The couple demanded from JP Morgan Chase a sum of $150,000 as compensation.

This is not all.

There is some more bad news for JP Morgan Chase. More customers from different locations have come forward with the same claims and charges against JP Morgan Chase for predatory lending and foreclosures. JP Morgan Chase though went on to claim that in one of such cases the home was not foreclosed at all while the records clearly show that the property was sold to another party while the actual homeowners who toiled hard every day were evicted out. The reality for the banks should be coming clear and it is hoped that the lenders will take notice of the experience of JP Morgan Chase and will work in an honest way along with the home owners so that the home foreclosures decrease and more mortgages are modified to let people manage their mortgage payments during this recession.